Help Us Pick the Bands for This Year's Music Showcase in the Grove

For one thing, we're changing the name: Allow us to introduce you to ShowcaseSTL. After all, this whole thing is about celebrating St. Louis and the best musicians found therein — not the Riverfront Times.

For another, as we announced last year, the awards portion of the event is no more. Music isn't meant to be a competition, and we're simply not interested in pitting bands against each other in 2017. Shoehorning artists into genres where they don't quite fit, pushing a voting process that inevitably fills everyone's social media with tedious pleas for votes, counting and tallying and numbers and math — it's just not for us. We'll leave that stuff to the Grammys.

One thing that is not changing, though, is that our huge annual musical celebration will offer the opportunity to catch dozens of St. Louis' finest musical acts over a twelve-hour span for a low price. This year's event will once again take place in the Grove, on June 17 (save the date!).

So here's where you come in, dear reader: We want to book the best musicians in town, the local favorites as well as the new and upcoming, the overlooked, the legacy acts and buzzworthy bands alike. And we want you to tell us who those acts are — regardless of genre. While we've done away with the awards, we still value input from the community!

(A special note to artists and performers: Don't bother nominating yourselves. If you would like to be considered for this year's festival, send a digital press kit to josephhessmusic@gmail.com.)

If you need help getting started, you can have a look at all the nominees and winners from last year's music awards — many of those performed at the showcase in 2016, which anyone who attended will attest was a hell of a good time.

But we're not trying to just book the same fest as last year — St. Louis' music community is ever-evolving, and so too should be the events that celebrate it. So hop in those comments and tell us about your favorite St. Louis acts!